The second job looked exactly like the first.
Same crate. Same straps. Same quiet, unsettling warmth leaking through the seams.
The crew of the Longhaul stood on the Third Wall docks, staring at the crate like it might blink first.
“Impulse control,” someone muttered. “Exercise some impulse control. Please.” It wasn’t clear who said it, or which one they were talking to.
The crate knocked once.
They loaded it anyway.
A Race Nobody Agreed To (But Everyone Took)
Hull-Saint Brine didn’t even wait for an invitation.
“If you hurry,” he called, hauling himself aboard his own vessel, “we can make a race of it.”
No one said yes.
No one said no.
The Longhaul tore loose from the dock at full burn.
The Open Canopy
The Fourth Wall loomed on the horizon—distant, massive, and threaded with chains that caught the light like needles.
Between here and there, the Wildsea rolled, green and patient.
They didn’t open the crate.
They talked about opening the crate.
They absolutely did not open the crate.
Things People Did To Something That Big
Hours out, they spotted it.
A corpse—massive, unnatural, wrong.
Not a kill.
A harvest.
Stripped clean in deliberate cuts. Bones taken in sections. Nothing wasted.
Whoever had done it wasn’t just capable.
They were organized.
The crew gave it a wide berth.
Brine did too.
The Chain Incident
Trying to keep ahead of Brine without committing to full recklessness, the Longhaul pushed just hard enough.
Hard enough to miss the warning.
Ancient lift chains hung tangled across their path—old infrastructure swallowed by the Wildsea and waiting for someone careless.
The ship hit them like a sawblade hitting wire.
Metal screamed.
Momentum died.
Brine was catching up…
For a moment, it looked like the race was over.
Flint’s Find
Flint didn’t just fix the problem.
He turned it into profit.
Working the tension, guiding the crew through careful forward-back motions, he didn’t just free the ship—he hauled the chains aboard in massive coils.
Ancient lift chain. Dense. Durable. Valuable.
The Longhaul lurched free, heavier—but richer.
The Shadow of the Fourth Wall
As they closed the distance, the temperature dropped.
The Fourth Wall’s shadow fell across them like a curtain.
The crate shifted.
Not a knock.
A slosh.
Something inside reacted to the cold.
They chained it down.
Nettle noticed.
Nettle said nothing.
That was worse.
Dockside Diplomacy
The Fourth Wall didn’t welcome them.
It processed them.
A clerk tried to turn missing paperwork into a problem.
Grakte turned it into someone else’s problem.
A quiet suggestion, a redirected inspection, and suddenly Hull-Saint Brine was the one about to have a very thorough conversation with the authorities.
The Longhaul passed through.
Crane Nine
Getting there should have been hard.
It wasn’t.
Charls simply… outwitted the city.
Through lifts, walkways, wrong turns, and industrial mazework, he found the path like it had always been obvious.
Brine arrived seconds too late.
He didn’t call it a loss.
He never does.
Dr. Pelt Quill
The lab wasn’t hidden well.
It was hidden correctly.
A false maintenance hatch. A tiled sluice tunnel. Heat, pipes, and something that smelled like preservation and regret.
Dr. Pelt Quill greeted them in a flurry of motion and rules:
“Don’t touch the red jars.” “If it blinks, note the pattern.” “Late is decay.”
He opened the crate.
What Was Inside
Not a person. Of course, not a person. Why would you think it would be a person?
Slabs of flesh. Preserved.
Blood ampules.
Organs. Some of them still twitching.
A sealed jar of biological slurry that moved when tilted… and moved when it wasn’t tilted.
Leviathan.
Or close enough that the distinction didn’t matter.
The earlier corpse made sense now.
This wasn’t random.
This was supply chain.
Things That Notice You
One specimen reacted.
Only when Charls got close.
It pressed itself to the glass.
He tapped.
It tapped back.
Don’t let them take us.
Same voice.
Same plea.
Not from Nettle this time.
From something that shouldn’t have a voice at all.
Things That Shouldn’t Work
Flint saw the machinery.
Distillation rigs. Heat systems. Transfer coils.
The kind of setup that could turn raw biological horror into something refined.
Useful.
Weaponized.
Marketable.
If he had access to that tech…
The thought lingered.
Drinks at the Cog & Oil
Brine paid up.
Or rather, Brine declared victory correctly interpreted and still insisted on drinks.
The Cog & Oil was loud, industrial, and full of people who didn’t ask questions.
Which made it perfect.
Nettle sat with them now.
No longer cargo.
Not quite crew.
Close enough to be complicated.
Brine didn’t believe their story about her.
He didn’t care either.
What Comes Next
By the end of the night, a few things were clear:
- Madame Sallow is not moving cargo. She’s building something.
- Leviathan (or at least proto-leviathan) harvesting is happening at scale.
- The Fourth Wall is part of it.
- The crew is now involved, whether they like it or not.
And somewhere in the back of Charls’ mind, something is still whispering:
Don’t let them take us.
Salvage Gained
- Ancient lift chain (significant haul)
New Asset
- Salt-gas jar (courtesy of Hull-Saint Brine)
New Problem
- Nettle is watching them more carefully now
Closing Image
Morning.
Blinding sunlight.
Three very hungover crew members that know just a little too much.